Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Patristic Roundup-Dec. 21-27, 2006

Welcome to the second week of the Patristic Roundup!

I noticed a couple of things this week. First, predictably, mentions of the Fathers were frequent this week, largely because of the drearily predictable, if necessary, blog entries (pro and con) about Christmas. Depending on your point of view, the Fathers are either villains of the piece (co opting nice innocent pagan customs) or heroes (pillaging the Egyptians, as Augustine would say).

Second, I've noticed in the little time that I've been posting this roundup that most of these mentions were drive-bys, so I chose not to include them. It seems that we are still at the stage where it is educated to mention the Fathers, but not to have read them. Still, mentioning them is something.

Yet, my hope with this roundup is that more people will be encouraged to read the Fathers at first hand and see how good theologians the Fathers were.

3 comments:

I suspect the most pernicious results of the web is the unending spread of the false claims against the Way in general and Christmas in particullar. Yes, it is true that some Christmas customs were taken over from pagan customs. No it is not true that the bad Christians stole the holidays from the good, gentle, loving Druids! {sarcasm intended}

I think you're right there, although I suspect that the web has only given more voices to the trend. I wouldn't have as many issues with the claims if they weren't so messed up in their history. Scraps of historical fact and lots of surmise is what annoys me here and leads me to conclude that arguing is just a futile exercise.

I notice from your use of the word 'report' that I have mistakenly given the impression that I attended the conference in Montreal. Wish I had. No, I was just giving the conference details as a further example of work nopw being done on Reception of the Bible. But it does look very enjoyable - Wilken especially is something of a hero of mine.